Fact Sheet

Child Poverty Reduction Act of 2017

Child poverty in the U.S. remains high, with nearly 1 in 5 children living below the poverty line in 2015. Children continue to disproportionately experience poverty in our society and are 69 percent more likely to experience poverty than adults. Furthermore, poverty is a particularly serious problem for children, who suffer negative effects for the rest of their lives after living in poverty for even a short time.

Beyond consequences for individual children, child poverty negatively affects the entire nation through increased expenditures on criminal justice and healthcare and through lost revenue and economic output. Yet there remains a lack of awareness and government accountability to address the significant problem of child poverty, and proposed solutions are too often politicized and fall along partisan lines.